How many common English words come from the Bible (or the early English translations of the Bible)?

Question

Zealot, talent, hypocrite are ones I can think of off the top of my head.

To clarify, some words used commonly today in English are words original to the bible. Not necessarily ideas or phrases, but words.

For instance, the word talent comes from the parable of the talents and was popularized by John Donne.

Answer 1

Here are some
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=bible&searchmode=none
(For example, "leprosy")

Interesting question. This would probably be quite difficult (time consuming) to answer fully. I could find no site offering a complete answer to this question.

Jim, http://www.jimpettis.com/wheel/

Answer 2

If the only choices are between A, B, and C, the answer is C. Translation C more accurately renders the pre-verbal, predicate nominative in John 1:1c. The reason for this is because it is anarthrous, and is qualitative in meaning, in other words representing that the noun functions as a kind of adjective that makes an assertion regarding the nature of the subject in the sentence. Since English doesn't really have an adjectival form of 'God' translation A can be misleading. Translating as "a god" however, also is misleading because it does not adequately represent the qualitative meaning of the Greek here. Worse for choice B, a predicate nominative neither identifies nor describes substance. So, it isn't saying what the Word or Logos is made of and it isn't identifying the Word or Logos as "a god," for rendering it "a god" identifies the Logos or Word as one of "the gods." Since this isn't what a predicate of this nature does, choice C is more accurate to the meaning. But, C also is the best choice out of the three because 'divine' in English is an adjective and the word for 'God' in the Greek predicate there functions as a kind of adjective. Thus, on that ground alone it best represents in English what is there in the Greek, and neither identifies nor describes substance in violation of the predicate there like choice B does. By the way, all this argument over the use of the Sahidic Coptic to 'prove' that the rendering of "a god" is most accurate is nonsense, and very much akin to linguistic root fallacy. Coptic uses the marker to mark anarthrous nouns but does not necessarily mean that it must be rendered as "a" anything in all cases where it is found. It's just a marker of qualitative meaning in many cases. In other words, in Coptic this marker commonly is used to identify qualitative nouns (and we already have seen that the noun in John 1:1c is qualitative and why that is so). Compare this with what is found in 1 John 1:5 and 1 John 4:8 of the Coptic. Both of these situations have within them qualitative nouns which are marked with the Coptic indefinite article. In summation, the underlying, qualitative meaning in John 1:1c is "by nature deity" (which is its qualitative meaning) but since we are only given three choices, the third choice, C. "divine," is the proper answer to the above question, being of the three the closest to the meaning of the underlying Greek there.

Answer 3

Probably many. Words and ideas take some pretty strange routes into common usage and belief.

For instance every one of the 10 commandments are from the Egyptian book of the dead.

Answer 4

Pharisee, philistine, babble, sodomy, and sabbath are others. An unlucky sailor is called a Jonah. Then there are common phrases that come from the Bible: good Samaritan, promised land, gospel truth, brother's keeper, etc.

Answer 5

Since the scriptures i have read are all translations, i would suggest that Your question is, at best, difficult to answer. However, i was surprised to find that the expression "burn the midnight oil" is from the Old Testament and not from Shakespeare as i might have tried to guess.

Answer 6

Practically none of them. The words of the Bible were Greek and Hebrew, and were translated into their English equivalents. The exceptions would be place names (Bethlehem, Nazareth) and liturgical words like Amen (may it be so) and Alleluia (praise the Lord). Personal names -- like Jesus, Mary and Joseph -- have undergone changes as they were translated into languages that did not share the same sound patterns as the original. Jesus started out as Yeshua, Joseph as Yosif and Mary as Miriam. Still recognizable, though!

Answer 7

The. It is a very common English word that can be found in any English bible. Goddidit.

Answer 8

Interesting question.

The Bible was written in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. Then it was translated into other languages. It was translated into words that were already spoken.

Answer 9

Well, a whole series of liquor bottles were named after Kings mentioned in the Bible: Jeroboam, Rehoboam, etc.

I probably know more about liquor than I do about the Bible....

Answer 10

Some that come to mind are, from the Greek;
apostle
apology
atlas
philosophy
empirical
patriarch
theology
logic